Resurrection

Notes at Springtime

It was the most arduous of winters—no, of years: winter, fall, summer, all the way back to spring. I am not yet ready to describe it. There was family illness; there was a flood. We have not been in our house since Christmas. The workmen demolished most of it, the handmade cabinets, the wood floors, the deep stone-slab sink where I washed dishes, the fancy appliances I spent an entire summer choosing. Our waterlogged furniture and books got tossed. Friends hint that I should be over it by now, this disaster I have not even begun to contemplate. I dread seeing my home in its denuded form. Meanwhile, we have deadlines to meet; our books are due. Things will get done—they always seem to—though it’s impossible to say how or when or where. Still, yesterday, in my late-afternoon metabolic lull, I sat staring out a wall of windows at a coffee shop in Las Vegas, where I saw a small girl of about five in a bright floral-print sundress run after a pigeon in the courtyard. She held a brown feather aloft in her pudgy little hand. She was chasing the bird, I gathered, because she thought he’d lost his feather. She wanted to return it to him. If she caught him, would she tuck it in his glossy mantle? The pureness of her intention, the delight in her eyes, the trill of her laughter, the greenness of the courtyard grass: It was enough to alert me that spring is finally here. Today is Easter. If you allow it, everything is born anew.